


slower than dripping sunshine

by powdermilkrory



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Drinking, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Period-Typical Homophobia, Permanent Injury, Possibly Unrequited Love, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, doc is like??? 40?, lightning is 20ish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23177857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powdermilkrory/pseuds/powdermilkrory
Summary: You have taught yourself to not feel the hunger panging in your stomach for that gritty feeling between your teeth, the red dirt you could never quite wash from your skin, for the hum you could never quite stop feeling beneath your skin, like the buzz of the wheels on the track.But you could never train yourself to not to feel the hunger for another man’s sweat, another man’s spit. You still flinch when you get close enough, God, like your fingers can’t stop reaching for him, like your very skin is aching, your fingertips twinging.
Relationships: Doc Hudson/Lightning McQueen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	slower than dripping sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> i just- i picture tom selleck from the 70s as doc and that's my excuse.

Light shines through the curtain of beads like wine in crystalised glasses, like mosaics before fountains. Smoke wafts from your nose, pungent and solid. This smoke feels tangible, like you could reach out and grab it, curl your fingers around it, press it into your palm. You can’t, and so you don’t try. 

Your chest drips with sweat, catches in the dark thatch of hair in the middle of your chest. You turn your head and watch the chest of the boy next to you rise up and down, the assurances of what you should already know. There is no blonde hair with greasy brown roots, no blue eyes beneath those closed eyelids, no freckles dusting his shoulders, like embers fallen down from the sun and resting on the skin stretched over his bones. He is not who you are wishing he is.

You stare at the sunlight dripping onto the floor, seeping into the carpet like honey, like the sins you’ve let ooze from your body and permeate this man beside you. 

When you were a kid, you’d watch men drive around the dirt track, leaving a trail of dust billowing behind them. You’d sit up on those wood bleachers and watch the cars race past, zero in on the sweat on their upper lip when they’d step out of the cars, never dizzy. You’d watch their saunter, remember the rhythm of their steps, the swagger of their hips. You remember walking around the track when nobody was there and pretending you were one of them, sticking an unlit cigarette between your teeth and willing hair to grow above your lip. You wanted to impress them, you remember, some twisted, rolling desire in your belly that made you desperate for them to see you, be impressed-- to watch you like you watched them. You wanted to be them, and at the same time you wanted to be so close you could smell the sweat, wanted them to be close enough to smell yours. 

You pull on your jeans, falling low on your hips and huff at the hair peeking over your waist band. You’re vain, and you know it, but the only thing you can be assed to care about these days is how similar you look to Tom Selleck. You look in the mirror and think you’re getting there, aside from the large plane of torn skin running from your knee up over your hip to the side of your ribs, like a giant ravine, like a roaring river, like frayed seams. 

You have trained yourself not to flinch when you see it in the mirror. You have taught yourself not to spin out, to not grip tightly to a steering wheel that isn’t there, you have taught yourself not to squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the world to continue turning. You have taught yourself not to smell the smoke, or taste the blood. You have taught yourself to not feel the hunger panging in your stomach for that gritty feeling between your teeth, the red dirt you could never quite wash from your skin, for the hum you could never quite stop feeling beneath your skin, like the buzz of the wheels on the track. 

But you could never train yourself to not to feel the hunger for another man’s sweat, another man’s spit. You still flinch when you get close enough, God, like your fingers can’t stop reaching for him, like your very skin is aching, your fingertips twinging.

You take another look at the sleeping lump in the sheets, remind yourself once again that it is not who you are wishing it is, and place your hat on your head, tip it like paying your respects. You emerge from the shadows of the curtain of beads, and step outside into the gritty sunshine. 

\---

He saunters into the diner like a cowboy, brim of his hat shielding the blue of his eyes. You think you remember those blue eyes, have them pinned like butterfly wings in your mind, the never ending expansive blue, but every time you see them you’re shocked, once again, at how all-encompassing they are. 

You press the cold condensation of the glass against your jaw, press your elbow into the counter and watch him settle the metaphorical dust he kicked up when he walked in. Patrons return to their meals, turning their heads back to their plates like stretched rubber bands, helpless to the pull of the Fabulous Hudson Hornet at the door, they are left lax and lazy in his wake, like broke elastic, like deflated balloons. 

You wonder if he knows he has that effect, if he knows that when he walks into a room, all eyes are immediately drawn to him, rain water to the drain. You suck noisily from your milkshake, wonder if he’ll be brave enough to look at you, cut his eyes across the room, like glaciers over the earth, cutting straight across. You wonder if you can melt him, hold the lukewarm water of his heart in your hand, sip it like fine wine. You dare him to look at you, mind screaming across the expanse of the room, like falling in love for the first time, you think. Eyes meeting across the room. He does not meet your eyes no matter how much you will him to. 

You are not falling in love. Clearly.

You know from experience that if you crowd up against him, curl yourself into a moldable shape around him, he will smell like smoke, heavy and potent, like leather and whiskey, like the softness of fresh laundry that clings just deep enough in his skin that only you will know how to detect it. 

He stands, unanchored, for a minute in the center of the diner, hand on his hat, and hip cocked. You’re nearly turned all the way around in your seat just watching him. You’re not even trying to be subtle, never were, and you wonder if everyone in the entire diner can feel the tension, heavy and heady like curling smoke, writhing against the ceiling with nowhere to go. 

When Hud stands a moment too long, sluggish but swaggering, Flo calls out to him from behind you. 

“Hey, stud,” she says, mockingness curling and wrapping itself around her tongue “You gonna order something or stand there posin’ all day?” she smiles, smug, like taunting a schoolboy with a crush. Hud is not a schoolboy, and you are positive he does not have a crush. 

He grumbles out some gravel of a response and approaches the counter where you’re perched, legs crossed effeminately and lips pursed around your milkshake, cheeks hollowed provocatively.

He does not meet your eyes once, gaze carefully skirting the radius of you, like he can smell the hunger, the yearning, the desire, like it hangs visibly in the air, and he watches it heave and grow from his peripheral. You watch him carefully, dusty boots, messy hair spilling out from beneath his hat, shirt unbuttoned just enough to be revealing, to show the dip of his chest, where the top of his sculpted stomach begins. It’s tanned from days in the sun, driving through sunbeams with his shirt unbuttoned, top down and sweat dripping. 

You know the taste of that sun tanned skin intimately, you can taste it on the roof of your mouth under the sweetness of your milkshake, taste it on the sweat of your upper lip. You find phantom traces of his taste wherever you go, like that sweat stain you left on his couch, like the whiskey one of you had knocked over in the haste to climb into each other’s skin, ice steadily melting into the carpet until it rested, dissolved and irreparable. 

Flo watches him expectantly, hip cocked, notepad clutched in her palm. You admire Flo, her effortless generosity and tenderness paired with staunch independence and self assurance. Hud is cool, but she’s cooler, and he knows it, if the way he fidgets like he’s keeping himself from searching for a cigarette is any indication. You remember Flo snatching one right out of his mouth and sticking it in his fries, and you’re sure Hud is remembering that, too. No smoking, she said, Unless it’s herbal. She had turned on her heel, looked over her shoulder, and only if you share. You’d been sitting across from him in a booth then, thinking about how cool he was, and you sniggered into your arm, watching him grumble and pick the stub out of his fries, trying to discern which ones were still edible. That moment had torn a small hole in the gauzy facade, like you’d been poking in search for a weakness and found it.

“Burger, fries, and a coke,” he says, lifting his hat off of his curls, revealing the sweat along his brow, the salt you’d like to taste on your lips. You think, briefly, of being the one he’d like to eat. That sort of hunger that is vital to survival. You wish you were part of his lifeline, the thing holding him here to this plane of existence. You blink and convince yourself to forget that you want him for more than just a couple heartbeats, you blink and convince yourself to forget that you want to know all of his heartbeats, until they putter out like the tail end of a rainstorm. 

**Author's Note:**

> low-key have no idea where i'm going with this story, but i've been holding onto this chapter for 6ish months and i figured it was time to let it out. comment where u think the story should go! pls i'm desperate


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